The point isn't that she cannot be objective; it's that, in most cases, the "solutions" they come up with don't make any difference, tend to demonise innocent people or otherwise infringe upon everyone except those they are intended to. Yes, obviously it's bad when cunts in power act like cunts, but the difference is, this problem may actually be fixable at the grunt level.

Again, it's not about them being objective. It's about letting someone who is not going to be thinking rationally, who is looking for someone to blame or just something to do in order to avoid dealing with a family tragedy dictate public policy, and we are letting it happen. No-one seems to have pointed out to this woman the massive flaws in what she's proposing, just as they never seem to do it any time the media is blamed for the actions of a tiny minority of individuals, because she's sad about stuff and for some reason we seem to think it's the right thing to do. It seems insensitive to say "get over it", but that shouldn't obligate us to let them do irrational things that will have an effect on the world that far outlasts their grief.

There have been just far too many cases where this has happened.

Remember England's double jeopardy law being removed? It wasn't such a bad move, as I personally think if there's new compelling evidence then it does warrant a retrial of someone acquitted before. What bothers me in that case is that it had to take some bereaved woman a decade and a half to get a law changed that, if any legislator had any sense when making it, would have been that way in the first place.

Same thing with the handguns law after Dunblane. I'm all for better control of guns, but why does it have to take some kind of cock-up or hideous scenario for the law to be changed? Why can't our legislators just use their heads in the first place? Why should the bereaved even feel like they have to do any legwork?

Of course, with the good comes the bad, and any bereaved parent thinks they ought to have a platform to get the law changed for the most tenuous of reasons. The porn thing is the perfect example.

Certainly, I have no problem with bereaved parents campaigning for dialogue on an issue. If that were the case, you'd probably see thoughts about laws like this one being laughed down and discarded within about a week of the debate. But it never is a dialogue, it's just one person on a bit of a rampage, who wants shit their way and will collect signatures till the cow comes home if it means they'll get it. I can't agree with that. At what point did anyone else get a say on the matter? Most campaigns involving bereavement like this are fairly high profile, and yet the first I heard of this was mere days before the bill was due to be passed?

Maybe it's always the sensible changes in the law you hear of, and the shockers that are kept under wraps. I can't say I'd have felt compelled to fire off a letter to my MP about this, but there are probably a good number of people who are affected and would have done if they had known.

__________________
Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

Well no, to be honest, in this case I'd be surprised if anyone wrote to their MP demanding that he protect their right to watch rape pornography. Doesn't mean the law should be passed though.

And over the guns/Dunblane thing, I'd kinda cite that as a bad one, actually, as the law change doesn't seem to have had any effect.

Well it's not so much the parts about rape/necrophilia/bestiality porn that folks seem to have an issue with, and like you I can't imagine folks would write to their MP about that even if they did take issue with it. It's more the ambiguous wording about causing harm to a woman's bits, which could have you stepping into worrying territory if you're into watching videos of BDSM stuff, even though you can legally enjoy it in real life if you fancy it. Hasn't anybody tried to slap the brakes on that part of this law?

On a semi-related note, laws like this make me despair a bit with the folks that draft up the wording, because there's pretty much no way the average person can really know whether they're breaking the law until the police start trying to prosecute people for it and the law actually gets interpreted in a real life situation. Until then, people have to watch their step, and that's just ridiculous. The law is always like that, and there's no getting around the fact that there needs to be a precedent set for it, but I reckon where it's limiting people's freedoms there should be more of an effort to be absolutely clear-cut about what's what and where everyone stands. Otherwise, it's fucking useless.

__________________
Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

I don't even know what the legal distinction between pornography and any other film is.

Well the wording here specifically refers to pornography, and then goes on to mention the types/features of pornography that are now illegal, but it still kind of leaves the original line blurry. Basically, if you get a boner while watching something that was intended to give you a boner, it's porn.

I chopped out a bit about how photos come into the scope of the law (basically depends on the context whether they count as porn or not) but I left the part about what an extreme image is.

And there's the next section, 65, about how there are exceptions for "classified films", basically films that have received an age restriction for cinema or DVD, which means that films are pretty much safe no matter how close to the bone their content is.

__________________
Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

Thing is, that doesn't actually make sense. I'm not arguing for film censorship, but I don't see how, from the point of view of this woman, a rapist is less likely to be influence by a movie than by a porno. If just seeing the image is enough to turn us into rapists, why aren't both banned?

My problem here is in understanding the logic of the law. If the law is intended to protect people in the films from being raped, harmed or whatever, well, existing law covers that. If the law is intended to protect the viewer from the film's corrupting influence, I fail to see why it only applies to pornography. Maybe it's just more high profile when a killer claims to have killed because of something they saw in a non-porn movie (Columbine and The Matrix, e.g.), but it doesn't seem that those who are "corrupted" in the way this woman imagines are as discerning as she/the law is.

This has come up in relation to other issues. The basis of rendering media illegal varies from country to country - some countries base their law on whether the film harms the people in it, some countries base their law on whether the film does "moral damage" or whatever. Here, we are clearly pushing the latter line, but I'm not aware that there's ever been any conclusive or even strong evidence that violent media makes non-violent people violent; there's some evidence that it will, for example, have that it will make the behaviour of young offenders worse, but none that I know of that it will make those who've never shown a proclivity for violence go bad.

It is also ironic that, as someone said, in some cases it would be illegal to watch someone doing something but perfectly legal for them to actually do it. Make sense of that!

Exactly. On all counts.

What bothers me is that the "how does the media influence us?" question has come up probably a million times in various contexts and even the most experienced sociologist or psychologist would tell you that there's no 100% infallible answer to it. Can it make crazy people even crazier? Possibly. Can it make people of sound mind go crazy? The consensus is probably not, or not that we can tell.

And obviously that's the most annoying thing about this law: they legislated despite there being no solid reason to.

They legislated basically to appease one grieving family. And in return, that mother expressed her gratitude by basically saying "tough shit" to everyone who doesn't like it. Nice one.

__________________
Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

It's that "tough on the causes of crime" shit, isn't it. Except that of course we don't really know why anyone is a rapist, so we feel free to just guess.

The shit thing is, when this law doesn't see a decline in the number of rapes... then what? Will she have to apologise? Will the law be repealed? What do you reckon?

You should put that in a letter to the editor in the letters column in The Times or something. Seriously. This issue deserves a voice beyond kittyradio...

^I don't know if the "they're banning watching things that are perfectly legal to do in real life" argument really stands because the law's so ambiguous. Can you "seriously injure" someone legally?

Most of the stuff there is illegal, I think. As far as I'm aware, bestiality and necrophilia are illegal, and obviously murder/attempted murder/manslaughter is (if you're to assume that's what they mean by "an act which threatens or appear to threaten a person's life"), which basically leaves the part about "serious injury".

I mean, "serious injury" could mean anything, ranging from getting hit with a whip, to assault, to grievous bodily harm. Where is the line between pain and injury, for a start, and where is the line between injury and serious injury?


And yeah, Oph, I'm pretty sure if rape rates don't fall, the law will continue to sit there on the statute books doing nothing of use but striking fear in the public nevertheless. They wont repeal it. Can you think of any law that involved the limiting of the public's freedom that has ever been reversed? I'm struggling for one.

__________________
Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

Not sure. With their consent I think you can. It's difficult because, as you say, the wording is so vague. What constitutes "serious injury"?

See, my understanding of the law is that it doesn't care whether people are acting or not:

See what I mean? Even if they're illegal to do, they're not illegal if you don't do them. This is my point: this law doesn't distinguish between acting and reality, so it would seem that the concern is not for those in the movie, but those of us watching who might not be able to tell the difference.

Indeed. People forget so quickly as well. My main hope is that people just ignore it like they largely do with marijuana and downloading, but then the downside of that you then have a large number of criminals who are only policed when someone wants them in the shit.

Yeah, absolutely. It's not aimed at limiting the kinds of porn that get made, and it's not aimed at protecting those who feature in it, because, like you said earlier, that's all covered by other law anyway. The only trouble is that a crapload of porn is obtained over the net, probably from overseas, and so there was nothing illegal about having possession of the kind of stuff that's restricted from being made here. This was their way to do it.

I'd be curious to look at the Obscene Publications Act to see if the types of porn we're not allowed to have possession of now are also actually not allowed to be made here. It'd be a spectacular dumbass move on the government's part if the two weren't consistent.

Edit: well, the OPA is even more ambiguous than this new law.

__________________
Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

It's a bit complex isn't it. I don't know, I'm wondering if this was a law they wanted to introduce anyway, and they're just using the grieving mama as a postergirl.

Agreed.